


ONE SIXTEEN.

by ltab



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: M/M, hoh donut but its not like a major plot point, schizophrenic sarge, season 16 canon divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 03:53:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19099216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ltab/pseuds/ltab
Summary: There's something immovable about a love deeply seated in opposition attraction. Magnets pull negatives to positives and manage to hold fast against odds.Colonel Sarge can't let sleeping dogs lie. Not when there's an opportunity at hand and an ache at heart; not when the ghost of a dead man keeps him up at night. Sense doesn't come easy to Sarge, but he's certain of one thing.General Donald Doylenevershould have died.





	ONE SIXTEEN.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Donald Doyle is dead the first time Sarge sees him round a corner in Red Base on Iris.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big shout outs to my epic friends evan and john for helping me write sarge's psychosis here, and to cat (weatheredlaw) for beta reading this and catching a ton of my mistakes and weird phrasings<3

Donald Doyle is dead the first time Sarge sees him round a corner in Red Base on Iris.

The base is asleep when it happens, and he's only awake because he needs a glass of water. It’s only a glimpse of gold-trimmed white armor and dusty blond curls, but Sarge would recognize those colors anywhere. The colors are so bright for the second they're there.

Sarge…knows things. He knows he's been at war too damn long, and he knows he's lost without it. He knows, from what Doctor Emily Grey has told him before, that he has a little thing called schizophrenia, and that sometimes the things he hears and sees and smells aren't real.

He knows for certain that Doyle is dead. He's known for _months_.

Knowing all of this doesn't make it any easier. When he sees Doyle and realizes it's just a hallucination, he forces himself to turn away, to remind himself of where he is. But it's hard not to reach out, to call Doyle’s name.

He's had his fair share of seeing and hearing things before, but never like this. Never with someone who _means_ so much. Who stars so prominently in his memories.

Back in his room, it's hard to lie down again. He stands by the door, glass of water raised to his lips, staring down the hall, as if Doyle will come back. Maybe he’ll laugh at him for being ridiculous, scold him for not going back to bed. Follow him _to_ bed. Anything to fill the silence, the empty space next to him.

He realizes quickly that he _is_ being ridiculous. Shutting the door, he retreats to place the glass on the crate by his bed and forces himself back under the cold sheets. He knows all too well that Doyle is dead and nothing can bring him back.

War didn't build him up just for him to break down this easily. He's too damn old to believe in ghosts, anyway.

 

—

 

“Seriously, _not_ worth all this effort, dude.”

Six years and Grif's never changed. Sarge can't complain; if there's anything to be proud of with this boy, it's his consistency. But Sarge still aims a kick at him from underneath the Warthog, anyway. He just barely misses.

“Can't joust without a stallion, numbnuts!” he barks, taking the wrench that Donut is handing to him with haste. “And this stallion's worth more than any racehorse you've seen on a track. Ha!”

Grif groans. “You have nothing to fight! Don't you get _tired_ of it? Trying to beat on every living thing that _isn't_ Red?”

“Nope! Never gets old. Fighting's in the Red blood!”

And it's…not a _lie_ , not really.

Sarge is drawn to war like a moth to light. There's something about the thrill of the fight, the fulfillment of knowing you're contributing _something_ to help _someone_ , even if it means you might lose life or limb for it.

Before he enlisted in the UNSC, he was directionless. Nothing in his life felt worth anything as a young teenaged punk, and into adulthood he couldn't imagine wasting away in some cramped office space, miserable for the rest of his days. The Great War gave him purpose (and a fear of heights), let him throw himself out there for the greater good.

The greater good _then_ was keeping humanity from its near inevitable extinction against the Covenant. Now, he's…

“Oh, oh! Sarge, sir, she's back online!”

… now he just doesn't know any other way.

“Eureka! The laws a’ physics have nothing on this little lady!” He pushes himself out from under the vehicle, taking the towel Grif grudgingly offers him. “Now all we've gotta do is change out those flats.”

“Why, so you can crash it again later today?” Grif says. “Real valuable use of our time, guys.”

“C'mon, Grif, we're having _fun_.” Donut waves a hand at the other Red, then wags his finger. “Don't be such a spoilsport.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Grif, realizing they no longer need him, turns to wander off, probably to go find Simmons or Tucker. “Have fun with that, you two.”

Sarge watches him leave with a harrumph. At least he helped willingly this time. Donut carefully gathers up the tools while humming merrily.

“Got that done super quick, sir!” He dusts his hands off and flashes Sarge a grin. “Beat last time's record by a minute!”

Sarge chuckles. “Easier and easier with practice. Didn't hurt t’ have a couple extra hands, either. Especially since we can't find Lopez right now, damn broken tracking chip.”

Donut lets out a thoughtful hum. “He _did_ say something about going to take a break. At least, I think he did, unless he was talking about downloading something. He'll probably be back soon.”

“We've gotta check on your hearing aids,” Sarge grumbles as he slides into the driver's seat of the Warthog, and Donut sighs warily. “You've been sorta confused about what you're hearing recently.”

“Yeah. I'd appreciate it, sir.” Donut places the toolbox down in the passenger's seat of the Warthog. “Do you think Doyle would be proud of what you're doing right now?”

Sarge freezes, hands on the steering wheel in front of him. Then he turns to Donut. “I— _what_?”

He's certain that no one knew a damn thing about his relationship with Doyle. He's also caught off guard by how out of the blue the question is; sure, Donut's a little scatterbrained sometimes, but not enough to ask something so personal in such a whiplash-inducing way—

“Huh? Oh, I just said I'd appreciate you checking my hearing aids. I think they _might_ have gotten damaged last week when I misplaced ‘em… silly of me! Sorry if I mumbled a bit.”

— Donut doesn't know a damn thing about Doyle, and even if he did he'd never ask about him. Sarge brings a hand to his ear, deducing that Donut didn't actually say that at all. And with how close the voice sounded despite Donut's distance from him— he should've _known_.

It's been a couple of weeks since he hallucinated Doyle in the base, and he's a little surprised that he's still thinking about it enough to have other specific delusions surrounding it. He thought he'd be _over_ _it_ by now.

Of course, it's, again, not the first time this has happened. Sarge has heard voices before, Hell, he’s heard full blown _conversations_ before, but those ones are usually too intense for him to mistake as real. This one is so innocently curious, so _Donut_ , that if he didn't have a lick of sense in him Sarge would've easily assumed it to be legitimate.

He refrains from pressing his forehead to the steering wheel to regain himself, regardless of how much he'd like to. “Ah, gotcha. Be more careful with those things, son.”

“I know,” Donut promises in a whine-y way, like he's a teenager being scolded by his parent (Sarge figures that comparison is only a few degrees off), then claps his hands together. “I'll bring them to you later today if you're not busy, promise! I told Caboose I'd help him with a project, though, so I have to get going for now.”

“Don't have too much fun, now,” Sarge calls after him, returning Donut's wave. He looks down at the Warthog's dashboard, a little dazed.

Doyle really _wouldn't_ be proud of what he's doing right now.

Sarge knows _he_ sure as hell isn't.

 

—

 

The opportunity to restore the structure war gave him— and that retirement took from him— is delivered by a reporter named Dylan Andrews and presents itself as a mission to rescue a dead Blue.

Sarge takes it.

 

—

 

And takes it too far. He lets himself be drawn in by the Blues and Reds and in the back of his mind someone is shouting at him to stop, saying that he's become a traitor, that his team is at gunpoint and he's on the wrong side of the gun.

It's another one of those voices that is too harsh to be real. He can ignore those. There's only one other that he hears, as Surge is talking to him, that makes him question what he's doing.

“This isn't _like_ you, my love.”

He misses when he could lovingly poke fun at that atrocious English accent.

 

—

 

He redeems himself— or, at least, tries to. A backstab for a backstab, even if the only way to get Jonez and Andrews to cover for him is to tell them his full name.

“Quite the mouthful,” Andrews says, amused, while they round another corner in the Blues and Reds’ base. “I can see why you never tell anyone.”

Jonez disbelievingly blows air through his lips. “C'mon, there has to be _someone_ you've told before.”

That hits Sarge like a _truck_ , but he manages not to sway outwardly. Of _course_ there's someone he's told before, of _course_ there was someone who knew one of the most private things about him.

“Nope,” he says, and he makes sure to pop the _p_ to make the lie pass as well as he can. “Just you two.”

Andrews cocks her head at him and says nothing. Of course she's able to read through the lines so well, it's her whole career.

Damn journalists.

 

—

 

In the end, they all make it out alive. Temple goes to prison, and Sarge is…Sarge is _relieved_. He happily partakes in the banter about food.

Simmons mentions Donut's absence and a sort of worry floods him, because Donut, as far as he's concerned, is _his_ priority, and the boy's always off getting himself hurt one way or another. But Caboose volunteers to look for Donut, so he tries not to worry so much.

It's after Caboose reports that Donut has left the island that he starts to worry again, but, still, it's infinitesimal. Donut decided to leave the island on his own accord. He knows well enough how to hold his own.

He'll be fine.

 

—

 

Sarge is proven wildly incorrect when Donut rises from a lake in a forest, and that's where it starts.

Donut rises from a lake in a forest, waxes horseshit about time travel, follows them to the destroyed Sammie Raphaello's, and opens a time portal right at their feet. Sarge wonders if he's seeing things until he steps through it.

Donut says more things until a very clearly hostile woman shows up, and, really, it moves fast enough that Sarge has a bit of trouble following. He snaps back into full attention when he realizes that he has to get out of here, _stat_.

He shoots one of the guns Donut pulled out of nowhere and grabs Simmons and suddenly they're somehow falling forward.

They land in a desert. Simmons gapes at the idea that they're in the past and rips the gun from Sarge's hands with little more than a distracted, “Sorry, sir.”

He's glad it was Simmons he got stuck with. Sarge thinks that if you could call any Red the brains of their team, Simmons would be a good contender— after Sarge himself, of course.

“Time travel,” Simmons mutters to himself, turning the gun over in his hands. “This isn't possible, what the _fuck_?”

“Language, Simmons,” Sarge scolds, watching the maroon soldier run a gloved thumb over the machine, examining the buttons on its side closely. “How's it work?”

“If I knew, sir, I don't think I'd be so angry about it,” Simmons brings the gun closer to his visor. “Sorry, it's just— time travel isn't real! It's scientifically impossible!”

“Well, we sure as Sam Hill are in the past, ain't we?”

“That's the _problem_. We time traveled! But— how? And why? Because Donut said we need to save the future by fixing the past? What does that _mean_? Where would we _start_?”

Sarge thinks about this. Where _would_ they start? Fixing up the past; that means a lot of chances just got handed to him on a silver platter. He'd be able to properly fix the recent betrayal that's been eating away at him, and that's almost too tantalizing an offer to ignore. They could end that betrayal from the start by denying Andrews’ call to action altogether, staying on Iris.

They could go back to before Epsilon's death and try to prevent it— another thing Sarge wouldn't mind doing, _not_ because he cares about the Blues, definitely not, he swears, but because Red Team would get all the praise for saving him. The Blues would be indebted forever.

Or, they could—

Sarge's brain short circuits. _Opportunities handed to him on a silver platter_.

“I know where we can start,” he tells Simmons, and Simmons looks up at his sudden change in tone, “I know where we're headin’.”

They're going to Chorus.

Sarge is going to save Donald Doyle.

**Author's Note:**

> im @femmejensen on tumblr!


End file.
